Counting Stones
by Satarack
Summary: AU His father now dead, Sesshomaru has taken over his lands and the first thig on the agenda is to enslave Inuyasha. This is only how the story begins, the story will change focus later on. Pairings aren't realy importent in this story but I plan on do
1. chapter 1

Disclaimer: I do not own the characters wich appear which appear in the Inuyasha series nor do I claim any right that lay therein. The plot is of my own creation and would ask that it should not be copied or plagiarized. If by odd coincidence there is another similar to this one already in existence then please note that I did not copy it for my own uses.  
  
Chapter one  
  
He was still in shock as he lay there on the cold floor. He couldn't be dead, he just couldn't. He had been the strongest demon alive. He had taken out armies with just a swing of his arm, burned villages by looking at them, and struck fear into all who saw his might.  
  
"Father how could you die?"  
  
Sweat dripped from the figure's face to plaster itself on the stone floor. In a corner of the small room was a pile of straw that would have been more comfortable, but even he was in his right state of mind he wouldn't have lain on it. Chances are that it was full of bugs that would crawl all over him at night. The walls and ceiling were plastered with ofuda charms to prevent his escape.  
  
His father had been kind to all. He had been understanding of all. He had given mercy were others gave death. He had been kind to all and in turn all had followed him. He had no enemies, no reason to assassinate him or anyone who could. Not even poison could harm him. So how could he die from a sickness.  
  
Light flashed on his face, fishing enough of his consciousness to make him look up. Through the bars of his cell were three figures. Two he didn't recognize but one, the tallest one, he did. He charge at the bars of his cell trying to rip them from their sockets in the wall so he could get to the tall figure's throat but he was repelled by the power of the ofudas on the bars. Snarling at the figure before him he as he lay on the floor, he curled up in defeat and returned to his thought. He was so enraptured that he didn't hear the conversation on the other side of the bars.  
  
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~  
  
"As I told you he is nothing but an animal." Sesshomaru stated coldly when he had seen that Inuyasha had gone back to huddling on the floor.  
  
"Sesshomaru!", he turned to look at his mate, "How can you do this? He's your brother! You both carry the same blood and yet this means nothing to you." Sesshomaru opened his mouth to defend himself but Rin pushed onward, "Do you even know what awaits him at the quarries?", once again he opened his mouth to respond but never got the chance, "death, slow painful death. They will beat him , whip him, and deprive him of food and water. He will slowly waste away and all because you don't like how he looks so much like your father."  
  
"Rin, do not assume that Inuyasha's appearance bothers me. He cannot remain in this family because of how he taints its purity of blood. He has brought shame on this family's name and as I am now the head of this family I can chose wether or not he can be a part of it."  
  
"How can you hold what he is against him? He did not chose to have been born a half breed."  
  
It was then that the guard decided that he should leave. Lighting a few torches on the walls as he went back up the stairs to his post. It was a family issue and he had no right to be listening to it in the first place and besides, his replacement was to arrive soon and he was looking forward to spending some time with his mate.  
  
AN: This is my first my first fanfic and would like to ask that you don't flame me. Not that your opinions are unwelcome but there is a difference between criticism and flaming. If you do not appreciate my work than please be assured that no one is pressuring you to continue reading. 


	2. chapter 2

Disclaimer: I do not own or lay claim to any of the characters in the Inuyasha series or anything  
  
that lies therein.  
  
Chapter Two  
  
Coincidentally, clouds had hung over the manor Castle of the western lord that night  
  
adding to the dreariness of the recent death of the old lord. But two miles south and six miles, if  
  
one were to follow the roads, was a human settlement. There the clouds had broken as if  
  
seemingly for the young girl gazing at the stars while laying on the roof of her family's inn. Like  
  
she was some sort of a weather goddess. Which in some ways she was. For this was a girl of  
  
power, untold hidden power. None could sense it presence in her so all simply thought that she  
  
was the beautiful daughter of the local innkeeper. This was also a girl engaged to be married.  
  
It had been a prearrange marriage meant to strengthen the family ties between her family  
  
and their village leader's. They would get a reduction in taxes and the village head son would  
  
get a wife. In her father's eye this was a great trade off. Did she mean that little to him?   
  
She sighed as she lay on the roof, she hoped that the village leader's son would be good  
  
looking and kind at the very least. It had been a year and she had yet to see the groom. She had  
  
seen the father the year before when they had been planning the wedding and if the son was  
  
anything like the father then it was very unlikely that he would be. The only two things she knew  
  
as certain was that he was male, and that his name was Hojo. Not the prettiest of names she had  
  
to admit. She turned over on her side and starred over the trees at the darkening clouds on the  
  
horizon. She frowned, were they coming or going? She remembered seeing them that morning  
  
and concluded that they were going.   
  
She sighed again and slid down to the edge of the roof and onto the stack of crates that  
  
she had used to climb onto the roof earlier. She had a long enough break and now she had to get  
  
back to work.  
  
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~  
  
The inn was usually a fairly busy place with its proximity to the quarries and the castle.   
  
True they were each miles away from the village were the inn was located but for youkai it was  
  
only a hope and a skip away. It didn't have the same rank smell of vomit and alcohol that most  
  
inn common roams did simply because it took more alcohol to get a demon drunk, which was  
  
one of the reasons that their inn was so successful. They could sell a demon more alcohol in one  
  
night then three humans combined. Of course the youkai had to urinate three times more than a  
  
human did. Occasionally a demon didn't want to pay up and there wasn't to much they could do  
  
about it, but the world wasn't without some sense of judgement. In the village lived a powerful  
  
Miko by the name of Kikyou and even though she did not like the idea she would create a barrier  
  
around the inn preventing all the demons from entering. Usually, the other demons will force the  
  
offending demon into paying up so they could get their drinks or he is given a bloody death,  
  
depending on how popular he was.  
  
But the inn had an air of excitement tonight. Youkai were huddling around tables  
  
whispering amongst themselves making an undefinable hiss, but as more drinks were sold the  
  
voices got loader and slurred. One conversation in particular caught Kagome's interest.  
  
"...you know I hear he waas done in by a hanyou child." said what appeared to be a dog  
  
demon.  
  
"Ha, that would be great. The invincible lord of the west taken out by a child." The  
  
group fell into laughter.  
  
"Ha ha. I hear, ha ha, I hear that it was a strange illness that he got from the mainland."  
  
"I'd rather it've been the kid" They fell back into laughter.  
  
"I hear that the hanyou is going to be sent to the quarries."  
  
The conversation stopped while Kagome past out the sake they had ordered.  
  
"Ha, the bastard doesn't have the old man to hide behind anymore." the speaker took a  
  
swig of his drink.  
  
Kagome wished she could keep listening but she heard the entrance door close. She  
  
turned to see a hooded stranger site at a table in the corner of the common room. Resigning  
  
herself to her duty she walked over to the stranger.  
  
"Good evening."   
  
The man looked up at Kagome then suddenly recoiled as if slapped in the face.   
  
"Are you alright sir?" she asked hesitantly.  
  
"Yes, I'm fine. What do you have for drinks?" his voice was cold and emotionless.  
  
"We only have sake tapped right now, would you like some?"  
  
"Yes that would be nice." the stranger replied.  
  
"We also have some stew on the fire..."  
  
"Yes I will have some of that as well."  
  
Kagome left and came back with his soup and pint of sake. He paid her and watched her  
  
as she replaced patrons' drinks before heading into the kitchen to clean some dishes. This wasn't  
  
missed by the demons who had been talking earlier.  
  
"Oi, the stranger in the hood over there was oggelin' the wench."  
  
"Leave him alone, no right man can ignore legs like those."  
  
"Ha, your just lucky your mate's not here to hear that."  
  
'Yes she is beutiful,'he thought to himself, 'and that power...' 


	3. chapter 3

ShadowSage: I'm afraid that this story isn't about Sesshomaru. I'm sorry if I misled you into  
  
believing it was with my summary. I put that as a summary not because it summarized the story  
  
but because that is how the story begins. It is meant to set the situation for later in the story. I do  
  
plan on making him a more important character later in the story line but not in this particular  
  
story.  
  
Disclaimer: I do not lay claim to the characters from the Inuyash series or anything that lies  
  
therein.  
  
Chapter 3  
  
The argument had gone on late into the night until Rin had tired. Sesshomaru picked her  
  
up in his arms and kissed her forehead before carrying her to their chambers to sleep. Sometime  
  
in the night she woke up to feel his naked flesh against hers and his arms around her waist, she  
  
inhaled his scent and felt comforted. Oh how she loved this man lying next to her on their bed,  
  
how she wanted to snuggle into his warmth. Oh how she wished she could just submit to his  
  
dominance on this situation.   
  
'No,' she thought to herself, 'not for this, he can't be aloud to go through with this. Not  
  
on his brother, he could do this to anyone else but his brother.' Sesshomaru shifted and  
  
unconsciously pulled her closer to him. Ah her mate, how she loved him. That's why she could  
  
not let him do this. She did not know what type of man he'd become if she let him do these  
  
things to his brother, her brother. She stopped to think about that for a moment. Yes it was true,  
  
she had come to think of Inuyasha as her brother over the past months. She thought he was just  
  
to cute when he pretended to be tough, and she couldn't get enough of that pout he made when  
  
she teased him.  
  
She felt a wave of dreariness wash over her. She twisted in her mates arms so she was  
  
facing him and snuggled into his chest, inhaled his scent one more time and went to sleep.  
  
She had to be well rested for the morning.   
  
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~  
  
"Man this collar itches",he complained as he rubbed underneath the band of metal around  
  
his neck. He hated this, he hated the collar, he hated the uniform, he hated the small room he  
  
was given to sleep in. He hated being a slave.   
  
"You Fucking bastard Sesshomaru!' he screamed in his mind, "I'll kill you one day for  
  
this!' He had woken up to find himself out of the cell he fell asleep in and in what looked like a  
  
servants chamber. It was small with a window facing the forest, there was a small bed in one of  
  
the corners that was to small for him and a hook on the wall were a uniform hung. When he  
  
woke he noticed that he was wearing different than when he fell asleep. They had striped him in  
  
his sleep and put on serf's uniform. They had also put a steel collar around his neck but the odd  
  
thing was it did not have a hinge or a latch on it and for the life of him he couldn't figure out how  
  
they got it on.   
  
He had tried to remove it from his neck but as soon as he tried to pull it apart a wave of  
  
intense pain hit him like a ton of something pointy. His body went limp and he fell to the floor  
  
feeling like he was being pressed in from all directions while nails were being driven into him.   
  
He lay there for twenty minutes twitching at spikes in the pain as it slowly subsided. Shakily  
  
getting up he decided to sit on the bed until he regained his composure.  
  
He decided that they were not foolish enough to make it possible for him to escape and  
  
that he might as well get some rest seeing as there was nothing else to do.  
  
He was woken by a sharp kick in the head.  
  
"Up."  
  
He looked up at the guard in front of him and had the urge to rip him apart, when a small  
  
wave of pain hit, leaving his body numb.  
  
"I said get up!"  
  
Another sharp kick in the head. He didn't know why the guard thought kicking him  
  
would only make him get up faster, it only made him slightly disoriented.  
  
"Follow."  
  
Inuyasha was still a bit disoriented and had trouble getting through the door. Annoyed,  
  
the guard pulled out a small metal bracelet that looked like a smaller version of the band of metal  
  
around Inuyasha's neck. The guard put it around his and Inuyasha got the odd feeling that his  
  
mind had been incased.  
  
"Follow."  
  
Inuyasha's body seemed to move by itself and follow the guard and it felt like something  
  
was probing different parts of his mind. He was a bit scared, he couldn't even move his eyes. All  
  
the guards they past spat at him and threw insults at him.   
  
None of them would have been that bold if his father was still alive. He could remember  
  
even as a child the glares they gave him but they had always been cautious not to attract the  
  
attention of his father's wrath. He had had his fun though, of setting up a few guards in  
  
particular who he had not liked. There had been those who thought that his father would have  
  
him sent off to the quarries or kill him when he was born and maybe his father had planed on it.   
  
But when he had looked into his new born son's eyes, Inuyasha could remember his mother  
  
saying, his face lit up and his eyes filled with happiness of an intensity rarely seen. Inuyasha  
  
could remember his mother laughing at the memory of his father showing him of to all the guards  
  
and knights in the castle, hardly waiting for the cord to be cut off. It had been one of his father's  
  
two happiest days. The other having been the day of Sesshomaru's birth.  
  
Inuyasha was brought out of his thoughts when he realized he was standing in front of the  
  
large doors that led into the throne room wear he knew his brother was waiting.  
  
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~  
  
She had done all she could for Inuyasha, now it all depended on how he behaved in front  
  
her mate. Rin took a glance at Sesshomaru, his face was set in its usual unemotional coldness  
  
and his vision never once wavered from the throne room doors. Even though, she knew he saw  
  
her. They had had a long argument that mourning about Inuyasha and she barely won him a  
  
chance to not be sent to the cruel fate that all others like him endured. And she wouldn't let her  
  
little step-brother go through that.  
  
She heard one of the large throne doors open and looked up to see Inuyasha follow a  
  
guard into the throne room.  
  
"Its time", she thought.  
  
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 


	4. chapter 4

Disclaimer: I do not own the Inuyasha series or anything that lies therein.  
  
Chapter four  
  
"Its time", he thought to himself.  
  
Sesshomaru's eyes followed the guard who made his way across the massive throne room tailed by a stiff walking Inuyasha. The guard ascended the steps to the throne and removed the metal band from his wrist, whereupon Inuyasha collapsed catching himself before he met the floor, and gave it to Sesshomaru. Sesshomaru regarded the steel bracelet in his hands before handing it to his mate who wore a look of slight horror.  
  
Sesshomaru moved back to look at Inuyasha who glared up at him. It had not taken long to make his decision on what to do about his brother. He had never intended to send him to the quarries as his mate believed he would. No, that would go against his father's will. What had taken time was thinking of a way around giving the tetsusaiga to his brother, as his father's will dictated, and still not dishonor the will. But he had found his answer and he found it satisfactory.  
  
"I have summoned you here to proclaim my decisions on what is to be done to you. You are quite lucky brother,"he acknowledge reluctantly, "it seems father protected you to the end. His will states that you are to be protected the royal house as long as you live meaning that as long as you live you are my charge and I am not aloud to let any harm befall you. The will also says that you are to receive the sword tetsusaiga on your twentieth winter and your mother's summer manor."  
  
Sesshomaru turned to see Rin's reaction to what he had just said and felt an urge laughed at her shock. He wachted as her expression slowly turned to giddiness which, once again, made him want to laugh. He turned to look at his brother once more and was hardly surprised to see the cautious expression on his face. No son of their father would be fool enough to believe that a person could change their feelings towards another over night, even if that son was half-demon.  
  
"But seeing as you are my charge, I have complete reign over your life from know on. My first proclamation is that you be striped of your title as prince of these lands". At this Sesshomaru hear an almost inaudible gasp come from his side. He took a quick look to make sure the royal scribe was recording this before continuing. "As you might have guessed you are now a serf to this manor. But luckily for you, you will not be bound as such. I have been asked by some to be lenient toward you and have decided that you will be a personal servant to my mate. As such you will receive a room in the royal chambers where you will be more accessible to she to her needs."  
  
He paused to see his mates reaction. It was odd to see her as she was now. Usually her face was full of emotion, a rainbow, a full spectrum of emotions. But know it held none, and it frightened him in a way nothing else could. Like how two pieces of metal sometimes pull on each other, crushing anything that got between them between themselves. But if you were to turn piece over than they would push each other away. He did not want her to turn over, to repel her, to lose her. And he just hoped that what he was about to say be the cause.  
  
Sesshomaru tore himself from his thoughts to look once more at his brother who confused at the long pause. "Considering your new social class there are a few items that must be clarified on. It is against law for anyone of your stature to wield a weapon of war." At this his brother growled loudly, knowing what this was leading to. "As such, while the Tetsusaiga is in your name, you cannot lay your hand on it. So I have taken the liberty to place it in the royal vault." Where it will stay for the rest of your pathetic life. "As for your mother's summer manor, as long as you are my charge I own it and as long as you remain in my service you cannot own it." Thus nullifying those two wishes in father's will without opposing them. He turned to one of the guards at attention. "Take him to his new room and that all of his items in the room he used temporally, be moved to his new one. And see to it that his new duties are explained to him."  
  
Sesshomaru sat back in his throne and listened as his brother was led out of the throne room. When he felt they were out of hearing range he turned his attention to the royal scribe. "What is the next order of business?"  
  
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~  
  
"...29, 30, 31, 32." Marking down the number of rice barrels, she was finished with the food stock. Kagome sighed, inventory was one task she was glad she only had to do once a month. Oh it wasn't hard and the cellar was a nice cool temperature but it took to long for her liking. At least she didn't have that accounting stuff Souta was always complaining about. Her father had decided that Souta was old enough to learn to run their family inn and had been drilling him on math and prices. He had also started taking him to the markets to show him how to bargain on prices and such.  
  
Kagome let out an exasperated sigh and leaned against the cellar wall. She had finally met the village leader son, Hojo. Mabye he wasn't a god in the way of looks but he wasn't ugly. The boy, which he still truly was, was tall and skinny. He had an innocent face that was cute but not attractive. Something you felt you would like to pamper than have children with. But in a few years, who knows how he will turn out. Her life wouldn't be terrible if she did end up marrying him. But the boy was almost timid sometimes. He didn't have the confidence his father did or the direction to lead a village. There would be tough times for them ahead if he didn't get more willpower.  
  
"Sis! I would really like to have the inventory as soon as possible!"  
  
Sighing once again she climbed the cellar stairs to the kitchen.  
  
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~  
  
He had been watching the movements of this strange girl for a few days now and knew for certain that she was perfect for what he had in mind. Those powers she had were buried so deep in her soul that no one but the strongest could feel them.  
  
He had made certain to conceal his scent from the other demons in the area. He did not want to have this chance go to waste. If word got to Sesshomaru that a demon of his power was seen sneaking around so close to the Capital it would force him into a confrontation that he did not want yet.  
  
To bind a person with this much spiritual power he was going to need quite a deal of concentration just to connect her to the jewel let alone control her. So he was forced to relinquish some of his earlier acquisitions to focus his attention on this powerful young maiden.  
  
He still had the rest of the day to wait through and with every thing ready for the night ahead it seemed reasonable to investigate another item of interest. 


End file.
